Episode 93: Revolutionizing Produce & Profitability with Greg Eisenbeis

Surge.

I just like saying the name of your new book, bro.

So, yeah, my whole. My thing is like, we're on the verge of a surge, right? Yeah, I got delayed. It's coming out June 20th now. I've been announcing, hey, May 30th be ready.

Just kidding, just kidding.

Sorry, my bad, my bad. There's a delay, actually. It's on my side, but now it's caused the printers to take. They're actually trying to go as quickly as they can, but it's been problematic.

Kicking ass.

Yeah.

Well, sometimes there's a delay printing books, but there's never a delay when you're listening to the Profit first podcast.

Especially episode 93. Yes. Gah. God.

Oh, my yife.

I wanna play the miso honey clip right there. No, no, no.

For you and Chris. No. Oh.

For our listeners.

Cause that's what it sounds like.

Oh, oh. Oh, no. See, now we're never gonna be able to grunt again in fun anyway. Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. Wow, my headphones were loud when we. You know, if you turn up this song, it's rocking, man.

Yeah, it is.

Right?

So listen, here's the deal, yo. It's not like I listen to many of our own podcasts. It's not like that's the only. I listen to tons of podcasts. But this morning I went for a run. I said I better check in on one of our podcasts. The most recent one I listened to. The most recent one I listened to. That's exactly what you said too, Chris. You said you over. You had your heads, mic, cans, whatever you call them, too loud headphones. And you're like, this song rocks, right?

Yeah. So I am Chris Curran on. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording. And you are Mike Michalowicz, author of the upcoming book Surge.

Surge. I'm also the author of Profit First. I'm also the author of the Pumpkin Plan, and my first book was the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. You know, all these books revolve around profitability, and that's what the show does. And I'm joined in the studio, by the way, but by the way, by Christina Bolda.

Hello.

Hello. She is British. She's British today. Oh, yeah. And you are listening to the Profit first podcast. Now, this is the show. We like to have some fun, first of all. And, you know, the feedback we're getting is pretty great.

Yes.

For our three listeners, they're like, it's fun, it's engaging, it's entertaining. It's not, you know, it's not just the dry stuff, but I think we're going to deliver. We always deliver something impactful today. Well, I'll introduce him in a little bit. But today I'm particularly excited about the concept of profitability. When trying to see the impact of what you're doing. You know, you can make money a million different ways, but is it the right way for you? And that's what we're explored today. What's the right way to become profitable? We're both doing the ice Quint. Like, what does that mean?

What does that entail?

I'm wearing the wrong shirt, by the way. I'm wearing a fleece, like a long johns shirt today. And it's a little warm in here. It's been cold over here recently. But by the way, revenue is, is. Is great in your business and the size of your business and how many employees you have, that's all wonderful stuff. But the bottom line is profit. That's what this show is about. So I'm going to throw you a softball, Mr. Michalowicz.

Oh, no.

Revenue.

I usually fumble softball.

Revenue is in a vice, but profit.

Is the best advice.

That was good, but I thought you were going to go with our guest's last name.

Set you up so well, Eisenbies, that's a good point. Let's try that one again. See?

Okay. Revenue is in a vice, but profit.

Is not as scary as little white mice.

Have you been writing your free time?

I am. They really freak me out, those white mice they got ready. Red beady eyes, like, what's up with that? All right, we gotta get. We gotta listen. We already killed like six hours doing this.

We gotta keep it going. Yes. Even our guest is laughing at us. Well, we have corporate partners that support this show and support us personally. I mean, I haven't received any, you know, Yankees tickets or anything from any of our sponsors yet, but I'm in Colorado Springs, so that would make no sense. So. But our corporate partners are wonderful. Mike, let's talk about them for a second.

Yeah. So I want to thank Fundera One Stop Loan Source, tsheets, Time Tracking Software, Fundbox, Invoice Financing, but the modern version of it, nextiva Course, My boys. And then Receipt bank, our newest sponsor, which really isn't that new anymore because they've been around for quite a while. And then Receipt bank said, by the way, Mike, they. They've listened to our shows and they said, you know, the way you're explaining Receipt bank is actually wrong.

No.

So they sent me a little script and Then I got to find out where it is. When I find that script, I'll read it later to you and we'll go over detail on all those.

Maybe Christina can sing it. That'd be cool.

Oh boy. No, again. Oh, I don't know. My last experience of singing on the show is terrible.

It was tremendous.

Are you kidding? I thought it was pretty fun.

I spent hour and a half eqing you guys and putting chorus on you and everything.

Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. All right, well, today we're going to be talking with Greg Eisenbice. Eisenbies. I don't know why I say. Did I say that correctly? Greg? That's correct. Greg's up early in the morning out west right now in Colorado. We're recording at 9:40 here Eastern Time. So what does that mean? 7:40, Greg, for you?

Yeah, I'm actually in Plano right now on.

Oh, you're in Texas.

Yeah.

Okay. The reason he's in Plano's he's an, he's an Engineer. He owns EIS Engineering, a company that helps. That takes 10 year old. I'm sorry. They help companies take their 10 year old science project to a super stout industrial machine. You know, you have this concept saying oh I wish I could do this. Well, you call Greg and he actually does it.

Oh.

Now Greg and I met out in Wyoming. He's a fan of the Profit first podcast. Probably no more after listening rambling start. But we met, I was doing a lecture at the University of Wyoming and Greg and I spoke briefly during one of the breaks and he said, I have this interesting proposition in front of me. Which way should take my business? And the question was about which one's most profitable. But then the question was which one sustained your vision for your life. The best too. Greg, welcome to the show. First of all.

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah. So. And you know Christina, right? You've heard her voice before. And Chris.

Oh yeah, several times. I think I've bench listened to your.

Stuff quite a bit, dude.

So now we're best friends.

Yeah. So you're the.

I feel like I know you guys really intimately.

Well now we gotta get to know you a little bit more, my brother. Tell us about what your current business is and this new business concept you have.

Well, the current business is kind of like what it said we take, I guess companies, machines. So like one example would be like this company's gasifier. It's like a flux capacitor. They throw in organic material and then it produces like 150 kilowatts of power. So we took that version that they had, which broke a lot, had horrible startup times, and we completely redesigned all the electrical, reprogrammed everything, and now that has like a two day startup time instead of three weeks. And the cost of lower and more manufacturable.

Yeah, but it doesn't. It. That must be so. Well, it sounds very one offy, right? So it is.

It's very one offy and it's service only.

And are you starting. What does that mean, service only? You're not actually making the machine, you're designing it or.

So it's their machine, you know, their concept. And then we take it and reprogram it, redesign all the electrical and make it like just run really, really great.

Okay, so you design it, then they have to build it, and then does it ever. You ever get something built based on your specs and that doesn't work out the way you anticipated it to?

Well, I mean, sometimes that's part of engineering. You get in there and you make assumptions at the beginning. Most of my clients, it's hard and fast, so you really have to fly by the seat of your pants, it seems. But in general, it's mostly pretty good. We try to do all the high risk stuff at the beginning. So usually it works out pretty well with, you know, minor things you got to do as you go. But for the most part, it works out pretty good.

Okay, so that's a cool business, I presume. It's a lot of peaks and valleys. You get a big project, you get a big deposit, and then. Yeah, okay, but you've been doing that for quite a period of time now, right?

Yeah, I'm going on 10 years. I started when I was 26, so I'm 37 now.

Okay, and then you came up with this idea for hydroponics, A vertical grow system, I believe it was.

Yeah.

Can you share what that concept is?

So that idea is, you know, using all the technology I've learned about and just been around like this, energy production, environmental control. Because we make a nutrient injection system for some clients in Colorado. You can guess what market that's for.

Chris knows all too well.

Hey, now, just moved here. Love it. Yeah, I mean, but I don't do that anyway.

I don't either. But it's an interesting arena. The marijuana industry, it's the.

It's not the gold rush, it's the green rush.

Hey, hey, hey. But why is it. Is it because it's so new? Why is it still in vogue like you guys Are, you know, instead of saying, I grow pot, it's like you can assume what it is. I mean, alcohol is a drug too. We don't say that way. It's not like, you know, I'm, I'm helping, you know, make. Well, it's a liquid, but I can't say what it is. I mean, why is it still vogue to say it's legal?

It's. That's probably the biggest challenge I have with it. I mean, when I originally, I consulted several of my friends before even going into the market, I had some, I guess, ethical, I don't know, feelings of ethical issues with it. But then one of my friends asked me that exact question. He goes, well, if Coors called you up and asked you to work on their, you know, their beer making machines or whatever, would you. And I didn't even hesitate. I said, absolutely. He goes, well, what's the difference between the two? And I go, I couldn't think of anything. I don't know. It seems like it's the same category to me.

I think this is the difference right here. Smoke weed every day. I don't know how that's the difference. I just had the button available, so I pushed it. So. Okay, so really, so this is an ethical thing. Do you think over time, Greg, that that will fade? Like when it becomes more accepted? Right now it's brand new. It was illegal only a few years ago.

I think it'll. I think people will become numb to it. Like they become numb to anything that's in your face all the time with the media and everything. You know, there's new states, you know, two to five states that come on board with medical and then get recreational approved every year. So it's progressing. I don't doubt in the US in the next, like 10 years that everyone will be legalized somehow. Maybe not Utah, but, you know, everybody else. So I see it as being, you know, with enough pressure, over time, it'll just become another thing we're all numb to.

Gotcha. Okay, so you've built these growing systems that can grow well, predominantly these nutrient injection systems. By the way, is this different than a growing system?

Well, yeah, it's kind of. This one has evolved. Initially, this was a watering system, a tankless system where we used to inject nutrients into the line that they would feed their plants with kind of dynamically on a schedule and remotely, because they're all over the place really. It's transitioned to complete environmental control also. So we control every single thing in the facility now from trying to keep the temperatures perfect, you know, the watering schedule, the light schedule, dealing with humidity, all that stuff. So it's really transitioned to kind of the full blown system. Not by accident, but just. It's progressed into that.

Okay, so you've developed this system. You have the full system and you've customers who are buying it right now. I mean, you have implementations of it.

Okay, yeah, I do.

You're telling me when we're in Wyoming, snow coming down, I was munching on a chocolate chip cookie.

I remember a chocolate chip.

Yeah, yeah. I'm addicted to home cookies. I think it was baked with marijuana inside.

That's a difference.

In the afternoon session, it was kind.

Of rambling, wasn't it? Yeah. So this sounds like Greg. It directly translates to growing other vegetation. Is that true?

Absolutely. It's the same depending on the grow technique. Hydroponic soil, aquaponics, they're all relatively, they have similarities, but for the most part, bottom line, like the environment control is like super, super important. Having having a yo yo temperature and humidity in the, in the room, that really stresses the plants. And in Colorado you get lots of plant issues like snow mold and, and powder mold and all this other stuff if you don't do that.

Okay, so you have, you've developed a system that can grow different vegetation. Then you come up with this concept called vertical farming, I think it was, or something to that effect. Can you explain what the right term is and what it is?

Yeah, so I don't. It's so new. Like there's. I don't know if there's a super technical. I call it vertical gardening. So think of, think of a crop that you would normally have outdoors, you know, hundreds of acres or, you know, 10. 10 acres or whatever. You do it, you plow the field, you plant the seed, you water the heck out of it, hope it grows and hope it doesn't get trashed by the weather at some point. And like say you're growing lettuce, you'll be able to harvest anywhere between three and four times a year, assuming nothing happened during that time. So vertical indoor growing is. Take that same concept. Get rid of all the soil, get rid of 95% of the water you use. Stack all of your growing trays, which is basically just a tray with water in it and some rafts, stack that vertically up 12, like maybe 12 shelves high, where you're producing like 100,000 heads of lettuce in a 5,200 square foot building a month.

Yes.

Wow.

Huge volume, right?

Yeah, huge volume.

And I think you're explaining the system. It's even robotic that you. Robotic pickers, Cutters.

Yeah. So we're currently designing those. That's my. I guess my specialty is motion control. And so we're basically designing these picking arms that literally almost not fully eliminate, but really reduce the labor count something fierce. So all the harvesting, planting, like planting the plugs, the transplanting those into the bigger trays, all that can be done robotically through. Through robotic arms and such. So you're. It's pretty like once you just get it running, it's pretty much going to be fully automated, except for the delivery part, which, hey, maybe Google will help me with that.

That's true. Sicken. Autonomous drone there.

Yeah.

Or drones. Yeah. So when you say pretty much autonomous, are you saying from the seed being. I don't even know if it's called planted anymore, but inserted into your system to it coming out in a plastic bag or some. Something.

Yeah, like a clamshell or bulk packing, depending on if it's a restaurant or if it's like Whole Foods.

Getting it purely automated. Not a single human being touches that.

No, that's the vision. Based on my background and what I've researched so far about that and what we're prototyping now. Yeah, I believe that we can have a couple people run a facility like that.

Wow. Wow. Are you the originator of this idea? Is it around in other countries?

No, I'm definitely not the originator. Hydroponic growing, especially indoor growing, is very prevalent in Japan and Israel. Massive amounts of their produce come from those countries, like from that kind of growing medium. There's three that I know of in the United States that currently do. This one's in Chicago, one's in Wyoming actually, and another one in Denver that, that I've been chatting with, but they're already doing it and having great success and more demand than they can meet. So it's.

Well, okay, so Japan, Israel, I think, you know, small countries, meaning large populations in a compressed area. You don't have huge farmland. No, that makes sense. Wyoming, I think, you know all three people that live there across the state. Like, why. Why would you have something like this in Wyoming?

I'm not sure it's. It's in Jackson. Jackson Hole, which is a tourist thing. Their particular model is a little bit different. Theirs is like a complete glass structure and they actually have like automated rotating, I guess, shelves. Think of a big like hot dog stand, you know, like when you go to 7:11, but put those with grow trays. And it's actually rotating. They're using the sun, the actual sun, to grow, whereas mine would use like a fancy LED light.

Okay, okay. So it sounds like an amazing concept. And I think the end benefit you were talking about was the idea you're at a restaurant and that lettuce on your plate just literally was just harvested minutes or hours ago.

Hours. Yeah, literally. So you're changing the paradigm from I got this shipped in from Mexico, California or China. You're getting rid of all that distribution, and it literally was harvested two hours before it was delivered.

Where's our foods coming from now? The lettuce on the plate, I'll eat tonight. Where is that typically coming from?

I think a lot of that's coming from California. Like in Colorado, they have a lot of farms. So you're getting it there. But there's shortages. I mean, my wife and I went to buy groceries the other day, we ordered them online, went to go pick them up, and we only got half of our produce, our organic produce that we ordered. And I'm like, well, what's the deal? This is a huge company. What's the deal? We're short. We ordered six cases of lettuce and we only got one. So there's a huge shortage of organic food, like in general.

Okay. So I got the whole concept. Now you have, basically, you're at a fork in the road. You have this existing business. It's generating enough revenue or maybe more to support your lifestyle. That's the make a machine when someone asks for it, but you don't know what the machine is going to be. And you have this another opportunity to make vertical growing systems to make basically take farms that are out in the country and move them into the building downtown New York or Chicago, right?

Yeah. Yep.

Now you're almost at your dilemma because you can also make a lot of money in the marijuana industry as that burgeons. That's right. Where is that grows?

Yeah, sure.

So what's the considerations? You know, all of them can be very profitable.

They can. I mean, the industry, the marijuana industry, it's such a fresh new industry. I mean, imagine an entire population of growers that came from their basement and transitioned into commercial land. There's a huge opportunity to cater to that market, you know, with professionals that know something from regular industry. So with my system in general, I mean, it'll sell anywhere between, I don't know, 20 and 30 thousand dollars per thing. But just in the water savings alone, it's a savings of 80 to 200k a year in just labor savings. That's not to mention the benefit you get of controlling the environment really well and things like that. So that's probably low priced and would probably need to be raised. But that's a heck of an opportunity and it's an easy sales pitch for me. It's not hard for me to, to really convey like what it does. And compared to all the other products on the market, this is an industrial product. It's not something that came off the shelf from China or something which you'll see a lot of in the industry. This is like a professional. We put Siemens controllers in it. It's a real deal hardcore control system.

You know what's kind of interesting is you're. This brings the. If produce like this is being made overseas in one sentence it's bringing jobs back to America. In the second sentence it's eradicating jobs in America.

I know. Is there a dilemma increasing a higher skilled version of the labor? They need to be a little more techie to work at the place. They're not just going to be farmers, they're going to be technicians. Probably is a better term.

Okay, so you're managing the systems, you're programming.

Yeah, these are going to be tech people. They're going to be probably, they probably know a lot about like electronic stuff because there's going to be a fair amount of electronics in it. They'll have to know the hydroponic side so that be kind of. I won't be able to escape that. I'll have to have experts in the buildings to make sure that that part goes well. But they'll be. So it'll be a kind of a hybrid between a tech person and a farmer, an indoor farmer.

You know what's so fascinating is how the, I think it was five, 10 years ago, the newspapers featuring the shortage of food that we as the population ever expands where what, 7 billion, 8 billion people now that there's a food short shortage of food, which there is in pockets. Right. But the idea was there wasn't enough farmland to do it. But now innovations like this are just changing the whole paradigm of food production.

Absolutely.

Okay, so let's get back to your dilemma. Do you stick with what's working now or do you move on? What's the questions you're facing right now?

I think the biggest question I face, so I'm just notorious for starting new businesses in like the last 10 years. It just seems I've been chasing money primarily and I think that was the biggest issue since then. I'VE kind of pulled back and especially since Profit first because it's given me kind of a decision platform to make financial decisions on. I've really stopped to think about what I want and to stop tangenting. So I'm at the point in my life now where I have enough knowledge of all these different systems that put me in the right space to either do the marijuana grow systems or do vertical growing. And I guess it just comes down to a decision. That five year question, which at the, at the seminar, you know, just this past weekend, it came down to, I guess the question that kind of opened my eyes is in five years, what. What would I be happy sharing with my kids? Because they're. I have four kids under four right now, so by then there'll be nine.

Wow.

And what am I gonna share with them? And I do not get warm and fuzzies when I say, daddy helps people grow marijuana. What's that? You know, that's not something I want to expose my kids to. So. And I want to share, I want to share my work, my life with them because it's, I think it's important to mentor kids and I want them to be a part of my entrepreneurial journey in the hopes that they would hopefully embrace it later in life.

So. Okay, so. And I remember you saying that that was kind of. I saw your eyes open and your, that kind of light bulb go over your head, saying that's because, you know, there's a lot of money to be made in marijuana. But you said, I don't, I don't feel warm and fuzzy about it. But this, there's another consideration. You have a process, you do now that makes money. And I'm talking about the, the creating equipment, so forth.

Yeah, yeah.

It's supporting your family. If you go into this vertical farming model, it sounds incredible. It sounds like the next autonomous car kind of concept. It could be radical, could change the world, but it may not happen. The farmer association may come after you super hard. There may be litigation, it may not work out the way you want, and maybe it isn't so profitable. What about the possibility of just abjectly failing? Is that changing your perception, encouraging you? What's your thoughts around that?

I think in the past that's probably been, you know, it's another risk. It's another tangent that my wife has to bear. Yeah, it's a risk in those regards. I think. When it comes down to it, though, when I really get down into the meaning of it and can I, can I build a team? Can I build a purpose and a mission around this that really, like, gets people excited. I've done that once in my life, and I know I can enroll people in that regard. When I have a true passion and a vision for something. The marijuana thing, I just don't get that. But with this food thing, like, it could be transformational. It's something like I can just feel my heart throbbing over something like that. And I can see that. And even with all that risk and all that, I mean, I treat it as an engineering project. I look at the risks involved in that. And to me, it would be worth it to be able to share something great like that with my kids, be phenomenal. So to not do it, I can just keep doing what I'm doing, which not necessarily really happy with it. It's, you know, service and stuff has worn me out over the years, but. And it's other people's projects, it's other people's cultures. It's. Yeah, it's their. It's their agenda. And I just, you know, I need to appease them, which is fine. That's what being, you know, part of what being in business is. But at the same time, there's a fulfillment issue for me.

So have you decided? Are you all in on this? Is this the next thing you're doing?

I mean, I'm going to talk through it with my wife some more. I'm trying to be very intelligent about this, but I think I know the decision, which is, yes, you know, hardcore pursuing it. I mean, resources are starting to come out of the woodworks to really support kind of an effort like this. And it's not really a divergence from my skill set or what I do fundamentally. So at least it's not like me jumping from engineering to real estate investing or something. It's completely in my wheelhouse.

Love it, Greg. Well, we wish you the best of luck with this decision. And, you know, my hat's off to you. I have found from my own experience, when I commit to what I think is changing the world, Christina, we're eradicating entrepreneurial poverty. We're in a very clear mission. The energy and power and focus and drive that comes out of it is undeniable. So, Greg, I'm just wishing you massive success with your new venture.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

And I have a question for you, Greg. If you go in this new direction. Well, you're already. Are you already doing the vertical farming?

We're building prototypes right now, so we're actually constructing the first version as we Speak. And hopefully having a harvest in the next couple months, starting that the goal is to produce more food than my family can eat. And then once I show kind of how our systems work, then we have to make the decision, are we going to bootstrap this? Are we going to. Are we going to go for money? Because I have several people already asking about, you know, wanting to be involved on a financial aspect. So I want to go back to the profit first stuff and lean on that and understand like, can I do that or should I do that? You know, things like that.

Yeah, because that was my question. Like, are you going to need the money to get it going, but also the diversity of your time. Are you going to still be able to do your current business fully as well as start this new thing, or is there going to be a time when you literally have to make a choice and not do the original business?

Yeah, I guess that's the paradigm of bootstrapping versus taking an investment. If I took an investment, I'm giving up some equity, obviously, but I'm probably having maybe a small salary covered, which is enough to feed the famous, which would be cool. On the other side, it would be continue doing the work I'm doing and just double time it until we get to the point where we have enough resources lined up to make the jump.

I wonder what the prince of profit has to say about that.

Well, the prince has a comment. Of course. The rule of thumb is this. If you can prove profitability, your valuations skyrocket, meaning concepts are worth one tenth of what a proved concept is. And so my suggestion would be bootstrap as far as you can prove it's a profit model, meaning sell it, get customers buying it, then you go. Now what you're doing is you're going to investors to amplify what's already working and you'll get a way better valuation. And what that word valuation means is you get more money invested into you for losing less equity. And Mark Cuban, by the way, is very vocal about this old school investing. Not too long ago was the Internet bubble, hey, I got an idea. Pets.com give me millions or good millions. And pets.com collapsed because it was a great idea, but it wasn't a proven model. So as much as you can, Greg, I would encourage you to prove out that miles far as you can on the bootstraps until it's absolutely painful because you'll get the best valuations out there.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

All right, we got rock and roll, Greg. If. If people are interested in vertical farming or any of your projects. Maybe there's an investor even listening to this show. Where can they get that information from you?

Probably the best, best place is just my website, eisengineering.com. so it's just the first three letters, my last name.com or you know, engineering.com and then just the contact form. There's probably the best way.

Great. All right, thanks for being on the show.

Awesome. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Greg.

So we got, we got a lot of things to do. Chris and Christina, I've skipped your shout out. We got to do a recap of what we learned. But the first and foremost, I want to thank our corporate partners. As Greg was talking, I printed out the little script. I'm going to try to read a script verbatim.

Okay.

Which I'm very poor at reading. Once I used to go to my local church. I went after my wife and I got married. We went for 10 years every Sunday. And they asked me, hey, Mike, can you come up and do a reading in front of the group? This is before I was doing public speaking. I was like, okay, I'll do it. I was so bad. The lesson I learned from that experience is read what you're going to read before you read it publicly. Because I didn't know what half the words were.

Always read it through once.

Yeah. So this is a non read through read. Receipt bank is designed to streamline your bookkeeping. Simply take a photo of your bill and receipt and Receipt bank will take that data as well as the Source document to QuickBooks Online in Xero. Better yet, you can set rules based on supplier to have this process done hands free. Let Receipt bank handle that data entry while you focus on what's important. Sound too good to be true? Take a free trial out of this out from their website and test it yourself. See, I messed that up already. Let's try it again. Sound too good to be true? Take a free trial out from their website and test it yourself. All right, so that's Receipt. Go to ReceiptBank.com, do a trial run. I also want to thank Fundbox, Fundera, Tsheets, Nextiva. All those companies are wonderful supporters of ours. Hey Christina. I know we had a shout out and I skipped over it. Who's the shout out from today?

This one is from Andy M. He says, hi Mike and the Profit first team. I love you all, you zany bastards.

Yeah, he made that in bold too. Not the zany part, but bastards.

He goes, I first. You heard you on Entrepreneur on Fire. And it was a galvanizing moment for me. I realized that there are great and successful people that are full of life and not having to confine themselves to the business archetype of the polished and flawless business Persona. The path that you are forging has created a wake that's allowing me to learn how I want to conduct my business and my life. Thank you. I'm currently running an ultrasound business and the precipice of launching a podcast for my sheer joy of conversing with people. Thank you for all you do, and I look forward to participating in your works.

And he attached a picture of himself, yourself, literally eating the book. It's right behind you, Christine.

So funny.

Yeah. So, Andy McHugh, this is for you. You can't touch this. There you go. That's for Andy. So. Gosh, the darn stop button doesn't work. I don't know.

Dance it out, my brother. Shake it off.

Just leave it on the whole time. But, Andy, that's for you, man. Thanks for the shout out. Yeah, thanks, Andy.

Thank you.

Okay, maybe I'd like the word bastard. Should we call him a bastard? Maybe he'll.

Yeah. You dirty bastard, Andy.

Thank you.

I wonder if he's British. Let's see. Is he Andy McHugh? No. The British like to throw the word bastard around a lot. He doesn't look so British. He looks American. He looks American. No, but you dirty bastard.

You don't know he could be German.

No. Then it would be Alvitas ain't bastard.

It wouldn't be in an Irish accent.

Does that sound Irish? Alvito Zane. Alvito Zane. Bastard. Yeah.

I can't do it.

I cannot do accents. All right, guten tag, Andy. What else we have to do? So we did our corporate program.

We got to tell what we learned and tell what we learned.

Chris, since you're so hyper about that, why don't you tell us what'd you learn?

Oh, well, first of all, I really like how he's in touch with his intuitive feelings about especially entering the marijuana industry, which I actually would feel the same way as him. And it's funny. It's kind of telling. Your intuitive feelings play such a big part in our lives and what I see because I, you know, meditate and I'm into all this intuitive feelings or, you know, deep feelings from inside of sort of like this knowing what you should do or knowing what you should not do. One thing is our mind can screw us up after that. Like, Greg can have the feeling that, oh, I don't really want to get into marijuana. But if there's other people around him saying, oh man, it's so profitable, and like, and then he's gonna go to bed thinking, I don't know, maybe should I? Blah, blah, blah, it becomes this mental ping pong. But the mental ping pong is not as important as the intuitive feeling. And the other thing I liked is he said he can really start enrolling people and selling his products when he really gets attached to the larger vision and really gets into it.

I thought you stole mine.

Well, then tell us what yours is. There chafing.

Excuse me.

As I cough it out. Coffee down. Smoking too much marijuana?

No.

Well, get close to that microphone. God damn it.

Geez.

There.

Okay, okay, sorry. See, now I lost my train of thought. Oh. What I find fascinating with through this whole process that he's starting to do is the water savings. He said 80 to $200,000 a year.

That's amazing.

That is it environmentally and I think as a country, we don't really think about the environment, which is terrible, but this is amazing. And plus the fact that it gets rid of distribution from other countries and you can have it on your plate within hours of it being harvested, the.

Ripple effect is tremendous. Right. You don't need the trucks blowing out smoke to deliver to your restaurant. You literally could have a little guy with his bicycle riding down for the local delivery because he's two blocks away. You don't need the water.

You know exactly where it's coming from, how it's being harvested. Because that's a big thing for me. I know for a lot of people, like, I like to know what's. That's why I don't actually even really eat out that much. Because I want to have control over what's in my food. And for this, this is exactly how you control how you're making it, what you're doing. I think it's a great thing.

Yeah. You don't even need the poisons. They poison put into the ground, the steroids, the fertilizer, all these things to get these plants growing faster runs into the water and then goes, yeah. I think the impact's huge. To me, it was when he said, I want to grow more food than my family can eat. Because in my head I said, you know the alternative? He stays in the marijuana business. He'll say, I can grow more weed than my family can smoke. Right. I mean, that's the alternative sentence. And I think that's the Aha. You hear that and say, oh my God, that is really not the industry I want to be in.

Right.

So I thought it was amazing. I also heard there was a book called the 10-10-10 rule. It was written by the assistant to Jack Welch. I can't remember her name at the moment, but what she said is, when considering a big decision, most of us just concern ourselves with what's the immediate the next 10 seconds or 10 hours. And she goes, we look so much at the immediate. We don't look at the long term. So she came up with this 10, 10, 10 rule. When considering a significant decision, ask yourself, what's the impact in the next 10 hours, the next 10 weeks, and the next 10 years? And it's interesting, when you look at from that perspective, it changes everything. Maybe you have a client that just annoyed the heck out of you today. In the next 10 hours, the obvious decision is just get rid of that client. But what's the impact in the next 10 months? Well, if I lose this client, they're my number one client. It'll impact my revenue and then the next 10 years. You know what? They've always been a great client. It was just a bad day with them. It would be a negative loss or it would be a big impact on my business in a negative way emotionally, too. And when you look at it from different time frame points and look back, I think we make much more cognitive and better decisions. So check out that book. But I think that was an application of it right there.

Sweet. And you know what? If you like this show, go to itunes, give us a rating or a review. You can do that on Stitcher as well. We're also on tunein and we're also on Google Play now, which.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But I. On my app, on my phone, I still don't have podcasts in Google Play. I guess they're still rolling it out. Although by the time this hits, it'll probably be there.

But. Yeah, what's up with Google Play?

Yeah, you know what? They're rolling out slow. They're getting rid of all the bugs before they release it wide. Same thing Greg's doing with his vertical. Growing. That's right, brother.

That's right.

That's right.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody. And we got to talk about profit first. Professionals. You know, we always end on this because this is something that Mike, you and Christina and Obi Ron and the whole team, including the lumberjack, are doing to. What is it? What's the mission statement again?

Eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.

Thank you. And what is entrepreneurial poverty again?

83% of the global population of entrepreneurs. I hope Greg's not one of them, but I suspect he is. Statistically, I was are running businesses that generate revenue but survive check by check. Which means if the next project doesn't come in next week, Greg's business isn't gonna be able to survive. And 83%, and I suspect most people listening in are surviving check by check. Yeah, you know, it's too bad because you can't then live your purpose and passion because you're too busy trying to make money. So I started, I wrote the book Profit first to Eradicate Entrepreneurial Poverty. Actually, I didn't even have that term yet as I was writing it. But I knew I had to fix this for myself first. And I found a system that works. We have over 1,270 companies that are running profit first out there right now, minimally, because we have 127 members. And of our 127 members, on average, they're doing 10 clients. That's how I came up with that number. But we think there's a lot more out there. But we think we're not even scratching the surface. There's over 100 million businesses globally and you have the opportunity to eradicate your entrepreneurial poverty, to live your purpose, to run the business that your dreams, and to be profitable throughout. That's what you did. You started your business for financial freedom. That's why you did it. We'll help you get there. So go to profitfirstprofessionals.com right now. Don't wait another day. Don't wait another podcast episode. You're on your smartphone right now. Anyway. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com Click on the find button. We will find you an accountant, a bookkeeper, or an expert coach. We call them the ABCs who can help guide you using the Profit first system to the levels of profitability your business already inherently has. You just need to be guided to it and that's what they'll do for you.

That's right. You need an accountant or bookkeeper anyway. And by the way, you can always ask your accountant or bookkeeper, hey, do you know what profit first is? Are you talking about profitability?

Yeah, that's the ultimate test. Go to your existing account or bookkeeper or business expert and say, hey, do you help me with my profitability? I know they'll say yes and say, hey, tell me the methodology you follow. Hey, tell me the certification you've gotten in this. If they say that means they don't know what they're doing. You got to find an expert who can drive profit. All of our members go through a certification and audit. They're running in their own business. They can do it for you.

That's right. So thank you to Greg Eisenbies. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Christina. Thanks to OB Rob in the background. We appreciate you listening. Listening. We really do. And, you know, every time you listen to the show, you're adding to your profit muscles. So that's. Just think, think of how much you're learning.

Yeah.

All right. We'll see you next time, everybody. Thanks for listening.

It.